A cornucopia of late news

By Mike Sweetmsweet@thehawkeye.com

Thursday

Aug 20, 2015 at 12:01 AMAug 20, 2015 at 5:00 AM

It’s time once again to report all the news unfit to print or that just wouldn’t fit when it was fresh.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is in a tizzy over Time Square’s latest tourist trap — women who charge a fee to pose “nearly naked” for photos with tourists. Presumably the customers are mostly male, but then this is 2015.

The governor’s beef is the women are scantily dressed, often wearing only thongs and body paint. Or, in other words, what anyone can see at the beach, on the Internet or in British newspapers.

Cuomo said the picture posers interfere with “legitimate” businesses. Hypocritically, a Victoria’s Secret would be one of those storefront enterprises considered legitimate.

Fellow Democrat and Mayor Bill de Blasio agrees with Cuomo and says the city “will take action” to preserve a “ family atmosphere” in the entertainment district.

Look for the lady entrepreneurs to lawyer up and claim they’re performance artists engaged in business enterprises with constitutional protections.

It would be cheaper for all concerned to wait a few more weeks for the alleged problem to dissipate naturally.

The early and bitter winter The Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting will bring on goosebumps and shivering and move the problem indoors until next summer where it will be out of sight. But out of mind? Not for those politicians who have no minds to be out of.

Considering 2016 is an election year, politicians already are riding their moral high horses into a lather over all kinds of cultural, legal and theological peculiarities they dislike.

Take, for example, religions that aren’t Christian and plop them down in a Bible belt state like Texas, whose ignorant, holier-than-thou right-wing politicians (think Louie Gohmert) evoke as many winces among reasonable people as they do belly laughs.

Given Texans’ inbred prejudices, it’s no surprise folks in the town of Farmersville outside Dallas are raising hell over Muslim residents’ plans to build a cemetery on 34 acres members of five area mosques own.

They have every right to build.

The non-Muslims disagree. They claim the Muslims will build a mosque on the site (which they also have the right to do), or they’re going to build a school to train terrorists.

They also fear the Muslim requirement to bury the dead within 24 hours, claiming that could hide the cause of death or let dangerous diseases enter the soil. As if Christian corpses don’t when they rot.

Some people threatened to baptize the site with pigs’ blood. That was supposed to deter the project because Muslims (and Jews) consider pigs unclean and don’t eat them, though anyone who’s raised hogs knows the animals’ toilet habits are superior to many humans, regardless of religious affiliation.

Presumably, when the town’s ignoramuses are placated (or justifiably humiliated in court) the Muslims will be allowed to bury their dead in peace.

When traveling in southeast or southwest Missouri, I like to eat at a small restaurant chain called Lambert’s Cafe, “Home of the Throwed Rolls.”

It serves down-home food like fried chicken, pot roast, etc, and sides like fried okra and macaroni and tomatoes. Healthy it’s not, but once in a while I crave a little type A activity.

The homemade yeast-raised rolls are a big hit. Servers roam the dining room, tossing rolls like baseballs to customers game for an unusual culinary thrill. For older, more civilized or less coordinated folks, they’ll simply drop rolls on the table.

I’ve been hit in the head or shoulder a few times and dodged near misses but incurred no injuries from the fluffy missiles.

But Lamberts may be reconsidering its trademark attraction because a St. Louis woman is suing the chain for injuries incurred when struck in the eye last year by a wayward roll.

She wants $25,000 for a lacerated cornea. She’ll probably get it. As for Lambert’s owners, they may decide tossing food is better left to the place of its origins — school cafeterias.

I’m no fan of the Fox Network, especially its cable news division, which is the GOP’s equivalent of Pravda, but I have to commend a Fox anchorman in Florida for his recent protest at how low TV journalism stoops these days to attract audiences.

Fox Channel 35 newsman John Brown stormed off camera during a recent live broadcast because his producers expected him to report the Kardashian family’s youngest member, Kylie Jenner, had acquired a pet rabbit and named it Bruce (after her father Bruce — now Caitlyn — Jenner).

Brown then was expected to talk about the implications of naming the rabbit Bruce with co-anchor Amy Kaufeldt and a guest.

He just couldn’t take it anymore and broke down, saying “I’ve had enough Kardashians! I can’t take any more Kardashian stories on this show!

“I don’t care about this family. I’m sick of this family. It’s a non-story, we talk about this family every freaking day on this show. Nobody cares, I’ve had enough.”

Two hips and a hurrah for him.

Later he posted a sort of an apology on Facebook: “Sorry, I lost my mind a bit, although it was partially in jest! I did feel better though after I was done.”

So does everyone who despises everything TV news is not these days — real news.

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